Wrong-footed
by M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng
Summary: Neal is having a problem and needs Peter to fix it. Peter is having a different problem.


**Disclaimer: I do not own ****_White Collar_****, its characters, settings, or events; all rights belong to their respective creators.**

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**Wrong-footed**

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Peter had a good idea who was likely to be pounding on his door at—he squinted at the clock—2:43 in the morning, but just in case, he grabbed his gun. If it _was _Neal, maybe the gun would make him think twice; if it was Neal, Peter was going to metaphorically kill him. What had gotten into him? He'd warned him to be on his best behavior today and he'd been returned to Peter with a tight grip and a lot of anger and frustration on the part of the other agent and handcuffed wrists and a glaring sneer on the part of his CI.

And now he was at his front door, panting and glistening with sweat like he'd run all the way from Riverside Drive, his hair in disarray and a wild, panicked look in his eyes. He was wearing sweats and a thin shirt with a hooded sweatshirt over top, something Peter had never seen him outside the house in.

"Sorry," he blurted. "I'm sorry, I'll go." He turned to do just that, still babbling, "Sorry. Good night."

"Neal." Neal froze and Peter sighed, mind made up in spite of himself, and stepped to the side. "Get in here."

Neal turned back and eyed him cautiously. "Are you sure?"

Peter stared him down and Neal ducked his head and did as he was told, standing awkwardly just inside the front door as Peter closed and re-locked it.

"Neal, is everything alright?" Elizabeth asked from near the top of the stairs.

Neal flashed a perfect con man smile up at her, nervous fidgeting stilling and body language transforming into suave-and-in-control Neal. "Everything's fine, Elizabeth. I'm sorry to wake you."

She gave him a look that said she saw right through him and proceeded downstairs anyway. With a pat to his chest as she passed, she announced, "I'll make you some tea."

"Thank you," he croaked.

Once she was past Neal, she turned and gave Peter a significant glare, nodding in the conman's direction before she disappeared around the corner.

There was an awkward silence after she was gone, Peter trying to be sensitive as El had clearly meant but not having any idea what to say and Neal avoiding his gaze with slightly hunched shoulders but an air of complete unconcern. Finally, Peter said, "Have a seat."

Neal glanced at the couch reflexively, but shook his head. "I don't want to disturb your night any more than necessary."

"Why are you here, Neal?"

Neal grimaced and fidgeted, an odd little shuffle of his feet. "Do you have the key to my anklet?" he burst out.

Peter blinked. "Neal—"

"It's not for anything bad, Peter, I just—" He ran a hand through his hair, turning away to pace a little, nervous energy returning along with the babbling. "I can't sleep and I keep trying to distract myself from it, but nothing's working, not even painting, and it's driving me crazy. I'm sorry, I know I should have waited until morning to ask, but I was going nuts and then I was here before I knew it."

There was an odd little hitch in his step Peter had never seen before—or hadn't seen in ages, he reflected; it looked a little like the weird shuffle just after he'd gotten the anklet and a little like the slightly different shuffle after he'd gotten the updated model. That combined with his words . . . "Something wrong with your anklet?"

Frustration plain in his movements, Neal paused to wordlessly yank up his pant leg and show him the anklet and it took him a minute to realize "It's on the wrong ankle?"

"Yes!" Neal breathed in a rush, as if he was relieved someone else noticed.

"You're here," Peter repeated in slight disbelief, "because your anklet is on the wrong ankle."

Neal turned guarded. "I apologized for showing up like this and I offered to leave," he said in that carefully controlled voice he always used when he was reading the situation and deciding what response would work out best for him.

Peter nodded in acknowledgment as he studied him. Neal was very skilled at hiding his emotions when he wanted to and it appeared he wanted to at the moment, but there was something . . . Something in Peter's gut that was telling him there was more to this.

"You can wait at the table for your tea," he said, and Neal's eyes narrowed slightly, studying him. "I'll be back in a minute."

Peter took his time re-securing his weapon and fetching the key. First, because Neal was a thief and a conman with a proclivity for running and a mind brilliant enough to keep track of how long it took him and where the sounds of creaking floors were coming from and work out from there likely hiding places for the only thing (sort of) keeping him in place, even without really trying. Second, because he needed a minute to try to sort out what his gut was trying to tell him.

He started by reviewing the day. He hadn't seen Neal much today, because he'd been loaned out to Ruiz in Organized Crime. He knew the two of them didn't like each other, so he'd taken the opportunity on the drive into the office to lecture Neal on his need to behave and at least show the man a little respect, for Peter's and his own sake if not for Ruiz's; he'd had a slightly less forceful conversation with Ruiz to more or less the same effect, although he could tell that the other agent actually listened even less than Neal. He hadn't had particularly high hopes, but he'd had a little faith that they could make it work and that a win would soothe the inevitably ruffled feathers.

Neal had exited the elevator on the eighteenth floor with a grin, a teasing reassurance that Peter didn't need to worry, and a cocky salute.

The next time Peter had seen him, he'd been handcuffed, ruffled both physically and emotionally, and being frog marched through the bullpen and straight up to Peter's office by a coldly angry Ruiz. The first thing Ruiz had done upon actually entering Peter's office was shove Neal into a chair in front of the desk, a little roughly in Peter's opinion, and announce that he didn't know how Peter ran things in White Collar but Neal's antics were beyond the bearing of any reasonable person. He then proceeded to loudly and without pause launch into a laundry list of the problems he had with Neal Caffrey, both that day in specific and in a broader sense as an agent, without closing the door. Neal looked not only unrepentant, but entirely mutinous throughout, but surprisingly enough didn't verbally protest or argue or try to justify or wiggle his way out of anything, staying silent and glaring at the floor. The agents in the bullpen below were curious and a bit surprised, and Neal's undoubted awareness of their scrutiny probably didn't help his attitude. Ruiz had finished by finally removing the cuffs and announcing that Neal was Peter's problem now before storming back to the elevators where he proceeded to glare up at Neal through the layers of glass for his entire wait.

Peter paused and went back through that last bit. Ruiz had removed the handcuffs. Neal hadn't picked them himself and handed them back with a flourish, like he so enjoyed, and like Peter would have expected him to especially enjoy doing to an agent he disliked, even more so when they were parting ways and Ruiz had so recently embarrassed him. He'd barely even looked at Ruiz when he'd done it, still scowling down at the floor. That was . . . odd. And there was something else, something about the handcuffs that was floating on the edge of Peter's memory.

And Neal hadn't launched into a complaining justification of himself the second Ruiz had left, either. He'd sulked silently. No, not sulked, something else. Something Peter didn't have the name for. He'd glared down at the floor, slumped in his chair without any seeming awareness of his surroundings, holding his wrists.

His wrists. There was that something flickering at the edge of Peter's memory again. Still not quite there. He shook his head, reminding himself that it would come back when he wasn't trying so hard.

After Ruiz had left, Neal hadn't been around much longer. Peter had asked him what he'd done, wondering how he'd gotten Ruiz so worked up, and Neal had huffed something bitter that couldn't rightly be called a laugh and Peter had known he wasn't going to get a straight answer while Neal was in that mood and decided to take pity on him and send him home with the promise that they would talk about it tomorrow.

Or today, Peter realized, looking at the clock. 3:01 A.M. He shook his head. Neal certainly kept life interesting.

* * *

Peter had always said that Neal was impulsive and he generally argued it—on principle if nothing else, because arguing with Peter was fun and mostly harmless—but, okay, so Peter might be a little right and Neal was certainly proving his point at the moment. He hadn't actually intended to come. He'd been thinking about asking Peter to fix his anklet off and on since Peter had sent him home earlier, but he'd intended to do that in the morning. And he'd gone out for a walk, intending to take his mind off of the wrongness of it all or adjust through practice or wear himself out enough that he could actually get some sleep or something, but he was so tired and rattled that he'd found himself on Peter's doorstep with the door opening when he suddenly realized exactly what he'd done. He'd panicked a little—Peter was already upset at him for everything Ruiz had said and waking him up at a quarter to three in the morning was not going to help—but it was already too late. He'd been really off his game today.

Rubbing his wrists and shifting his feet—one that should be weighted down by an anklet and wasn't and one that shouldn't be and was—he decided to just do as Peter said to avoid making it any worse. Peter was hopefully going to get the key, so there was at least that.

He shuffled over to the table, smiling at Elizabeth when she glanced up from her place by the counter. She smiled back and he ducked his head guiltily.

"Problem with the anklet?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah."

"Something Peter can fix?"

"Yes." She eyed him after that. "I'm sorry," he offered, "I should have waited until morning."

She waved the thought away. "I bet it's annoying, isn't it?"

"It's worse than when I first got it," he said with a wry smile. "I—It's weird, but I've been wearing it so long that it feels weird when it's not there."

"You're used to it."

"Yeah, except right now it's on the wrong ankle, so I've got the weird feeling I get when it's missing on my left ankle—"

"And the feeling you had when it was brand-new on the other ankle?"

"Exactly!"

"That can't be fun," she commiserated, bringing two cups of tea over to the table. "You came so Peter can switch it back to the right ankle?"

"It's actually the left ankle I was hoping he'd switch it to," he joked, taking his tea and adding sugar.

She laughed, but gave him another look. "You weren't sure he'd switch it back?" she asked after a minute, eyes on her own tea as she stirred it.

He shot her a sharp look. Clever, clever Elizabeth. "He's a bit annoyed with me at the moment," he admitted.

"I heard." He gave her another wry smile. "But you can't honestly think that Peter would just let you suffer like that."

He shrugged. "You know Peter, always telling me to 'cowboy up.'" He rolled his eyes to make her laugh.

"Doesn't mean I'd leave you with a burr under your saddle," Peter said behind him.

Neal rolled his eyes again as Elizabeth stood up. "I'll let you boys talk." She said goodnight to each of them, with a hand on Neal's shoulder and then a kiss to Peter.

* * *

"Alright," Peter said, showing the key to Neal as soon as he'd said goodnight to Elizabeth. Neal slid from his chair and propped his foot up where Peter could reach it more easily.

"Peter, thank you," he said fervently, reaching to hitch his pant leg up from where it had caught on the anklet.

A suggestion of discoloration peeking out from under the sleeves of Neal's sweatshirt brought the memory that had been niggling at Peter to the forefront and when he reached out, he went for Neal's wrists instead of the anklet. Neal startled and leaned away, wary.

"Peter?"

Peter had to release one wrist to shove the sleeve on the other back and Neal surreptitiously tucked it partially behind him. One wrist bare and revealing bruising, though, nothing was stopping Peter; he shoved the key thoughtlessly onto the table and snatched at the other wrist. Neal pulled it away with a flinch initially, but surrendered it almost immediately, and when Peter released the first wrist to bare the second, Neal didn't pull it away.

"Ruiz?" Peter demanded.

"Yeah."

Peter looked up sharply at his tone—casual, resigned, neutral—and Neal shuffled back a bit, face guarded and wary. At the sight of it, Peter stifled his instinct to interrogate and dropped the wrists, stepping back to give Neal space.

"Anything else?" he said instead, keeping his tone level. _Anything else he did to you? Anything else I should know about? Anything else you can tell me about how this happened?_

Neal paused a minute, weighing his answer, then jiggled his knee, foot still propped on the chair. "The anklet?"

"Seriously?"

Neal shrugged.

Peter gestured at the key, sitting next to Neal on the table. Neal studied him for a second, then ducked his head, scooping up the key and executing the switch. He gave a little sigh when the anklet was back in its proper place and paused again after he'd lowered his foot as if things were settling inside him because of it. Then he stepped forward, firm and sure, and handed the key back without whining or cajoling; Peter felt a surge of something warm and proud.

"Thank you, Peter."

Peter nodded, then jerked his head toward the stairs.

"Right."

"You'll sleep in the guest room."

Neal, already heading in that direction, paused and looked at Peter in confusion for a second, then, exhausted and frustrated and disappointed, "Peter, I have the anklet on. Look." He bent and grabbed his pants leg with both hands to jerk it clear, twisting his foot around. "It's all lit up and secure and everything!"

"I know, Neal," Peter assured him, frowning. "This isn't about the anklet."

Neal straightened and threw his arms wide as if to say he couldn't think of anything else.

"Neal, it's three in the morning and you're exhausted and coming down from what looks like a serious adrenaline high."

Neal smirked. "Aww, Peter! You're worried about me."

"Bed, Neal!"

Of course he was worried. But it wouldn't do to let Neal _win_.

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**And then the next morning, Peter drags the story out of his reluctant (but slightly better rested) CI. The muse isn't sure she wants to let me write that-or what actually happened with Ruiz-so if you want it, you'll have to let her know. Otherwise this is a one-shot (unless 1917farmgirl's desire for the story pushes the muse all by itself; it's been known to happen).**

**Comments, critiques, and constructive criticism are welcome as I am always looking to improve!**

**Have a beautiful day!**

**M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng**


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